EFQM Forum 2016 - Day 2

This morning EFQM Excellence Award Applicants took part in a Sharing session. During 1h30, they presented their approaches and answered questions from the attendees.

The next session was presented by Rupert Hoellbacher, Bosch Blaichach, on Industry 4.0. It was then followed by a speech from Nerea Torres, CEO of Siemens PPAL, on Leading the Transformation to Industry 4.0.

Needless to say that both were insppiring and completed each other quite well

It started with Malene Rydahl, Happy as a Dane who spoke about Happiness as a Driver for Excellence and how it can lead to better financial results. With her we learned many important lessons :

- If you treat your employees like children, they will behave like children- Feeling to be part of something is engaging, something money cannot achieve - We value people for what they do. Excellent results come from valuing people for who they are- Trust increases performance by 6 times

To only name a few!

It was followed by a presentation from Dr. Al Nuseirat from the Dubai Government Excellence Program (DGEP). With him, we discovered a vision: Dubai 2021 and Ambitions beyond the Limits. It offered us a view of the transformation Dubai went through but also that great Leaders, like H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, are curcial.

Finally, Prof. Vittorio Cesarotti from the University of Rome Tor Vergata made a powerful recap of the two days and a little more...Here a short summary of an inspiring presentation:

Digital transformation is changing our habits in such a profound way that our expectations are changing too. Whatever gets into our lives we are more and more expecting to have access, control, choice, to be able to contribute, influence, share and to have all of this very fast.

On the other hand organisations are substantially stuck on their XX century structures. Those that are introducing digital transformation are mostly doing it for increasing system efficience, not for changing their essence, their value propositions.This is increasing the distance between organisations and people (customers, users, employees, etc.) with a consequent loss in the ability to generate value and being successful.

Organisations need to put people at the center when rethinking their way of being. Becoming learning and living organisations, introducing new leadership models (not any more hero-leaders but coaches), new forms of (intrinsic) motivation, fully exploiting the potential of engagement.

EFQM can play an important role in this, since it is a powerful sharing community. However it will have to face, in the near future, some important challenges such as becoming more dynamic, connected, participative and even more value adding. Essentially becoming itself a learning and living organisation.